


Flower Eater

by mizael



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Flowers, Hanahaki Disease, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-16
Updated: 2015-08-16
Packaged: 2018-04-15 02:42:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4590003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mizael/pseuds/mizael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From flushed skin they'll grow, seeds and roots and stems, feasting on flesh. And they'll blossom into beautiful prismatic petals, a sign of death.</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p> Akaba Reiji, felled by flowers.<br/>(Akaba Reiji, felled by love.)</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	Flower Eater

**Author's Note:**

> [duckiesandlemons](http://archiveofourown.org/users/duckiesandlemons/) and i were trying to do prompt tables from like lj and my prompt was "powder"  
>  this wasn't supposed to be this long

Akaba Reiji holds galaxies in his hands, eerie bioluminescent masses made of gas and light, with a hundred dying stars and a thousand more made from the ashes of their death. And in-between each star there orbits planets in a ring, a million more organisms on its rocks, life and bacteria and too many other things that humans dream of in their wildest fantasies.

To be more specific he holds power in his hands: wealth and knowledge and prosperity bundled in his arms, fame on his face, enchantment in his mouth. Upon his smile there are a thousand beautiful flowers that spring from his skin and cover the earth in its color, its beauty, its resonance and abundance.

He was felled by flowers.

The seeds that grew from his mouth were beautiful roses, camellias, spider lilies—red, red, and red all over. The stems that sprung from his lips were bright green and canton jade and amazon moss and caribbean seaweed and too many other things that highlighted the bunch of red petals on top, covering his mouth and his nose until he could breathe nothing but flowers.

“You should see a doctor,” one of his servants had said, looking up from the stack of papers in their hands to him, fingers curled around a clipboard until the knuckles were stark white. “You should see a doctor and get those flowers removed.”

“That’s not a priority right now,” he’d responded, too caught up in his work to notice his own well-being. He’d feel a weight in his jaw and reach in to pull a stubborn petal from his mouth, slicked in saliva, and bundle it up in a tissue to throw into the nearest trashcan. “Our stock reports from the last month, if you will.”

Akaba Reiji would not be felled by simple flowers.

(Ignored, untended, untouched, unpruned—the flowers continued to grow until they spilled from his ears and covered his eyes.)

(Like graveyard soil.)

So life went on.

In the morning, he’d wake up and remove more flowers from his mouth, dumping whole spider lilies and camellias into the trash bin, cut stems from his cheeks and deposit them all into the sink.

“How do you do, Mister Akaba?” his servants would greet him and there would be no trace of plant life in his bones until lunchtime, when they regrew with new vigor and attempt to cover his entire face in their petals.

“You’re pretty stupid, Akaba, but this is a new low,” Kurosaki Shun had said, pushing aside the thorny stems of roses to cut them all from their perch on his face. “They’ll start coming out of your eyes next, and then you won’t be able to do your precious work.”

“I have plenty of time before they reach that stage,” Reiji responded and let Shun do what he needed to get rid of all the greenery on his visage. “There’s no need for haste.”

“Yeah, tell that to me when you can’t see anymore,” but despite Shun’s snort he ran his thumbs along Reiji’s cheek one last time, pushed down all the stubborn stems and checked him once more before leaving.

Months went by, and the flowers continued to grow.

There exists a disease in this world called _Hanahaki-byou_ , the flower-spitting disease. Seeds will sprout from the heart and cause a person to cough up flowers continuously. If left untreated, the disease will spread until the flowers start growing out of ears and eyes and mouth, petals will overtake skin, and keep growing until the host is a flowering graveyard, unable to move or speak or breathe.

Infection does not come from airborne pollen or bacteria, by the touch of another infected person or by fluid contact.

Infection comes from love.

Akaba Reiji fell in love with a passing summer, a boy whose eyes were red like the stars he held in his hands, laughter light like the glow that shines from them.

Recovery does not occur until that love is returned.

_“Sakaki Yuuya!” he’d introduced himself, smile bright and shining, hand welcoming, flaming red hair like camellias and spider lilies and roses, green roots like amazon moss and canton jade and caribbean seaweed. He was two years younger than Reiji, with dreams of Broadway and Hollywood, flying with his own two wings. “Nice to meet ya!”_

_“Likewise,” he’d said in reply, taking Yuuya’s hand in his and shaking it firmly. Sparks danced across their skin and ignited the seeds in Reiji’s heart that began to flower and grow, encompass his immune system in pollen. “Akaba Reiji.”_

And like summer, he’d left at the end of August, taking with him Reiji’s cure and chance of recovery.

“You should find him, you know,” Shun likes to say, pushing nails into Reiji’s skin and making him hiss in return as he pulls seeds from his skin. “Before the flowers start to grow from your fingers and you can’t use them anymore.”

“I have plenty of time before that; there’s no need for haste.”

“So you say,” Shun replies, frowning. “Akaba, you may be a huge asshole, but—whatever, just find the guy. I don’t want to do your goddamn work for you when you can’t.”

“So you _do_ care,” Reiji raises an eyebrow and receives a rather harsh jab in return.

Shun hisses, cheeks red. “Fuck no. I just don’t want to clean up your mess.”

And leaves him, once again, flowerless.

—A year goes by.

The flowers grow from the holes in his eyes and cover his vision, camellias dance across his hands and reach for his face, spider lilies sprout from his chest, rose petals make their way out of his mouth in saliva and blood, an unholy matrimony of red, red, and too much red.

He would die like that, covered in a majesty of carnelian, vines around his legs until he couldn’t move, flowers sprouting from his heart and into his lungs until he couldn’t breathe.

Akaba Reiji, felled by flowers.

(Akaba Reiji, felled by love.)

“There’s someone here to see you,” his nurse says, smiling down at him pitifully in his bed of roots and stems and petals, blooms on his lips and neck, flowers wrapping deadly vines around his entire body. “I’ll let them in.”

Reiji lost his voice a month ago, when the flowers deposited seeds along his throat until they grew from every crack and crevice of skin there, entangling his voice box in thorns and roots. Shun had pitied him then, too, proceeded to try and cut the flowers from his eyes so that he could still see. The least he could do, he said.

Summer comes running in with wide red eyes, worry on his face in the creases of his brow, hands trembling with fear, and he approaches with hurried steps, afraid to go any slower to Reiji’s deathbed.

“Gods,” he says, disbelief in his breath, and runs his fingers along a single spider lily on Reiji’s chest. “I didn’t know.”

_You weren’t supposed to_ , Reiji wants to say.

Yuuya gives him a weak smile, splays his hands across the field of flowers on Reiji’s shoulder. “I didn’t know at all, and I thought I would end up like this, too.”

_Too?_ Reiji wants to ask but Yuuya reads the knit of his brows and laughs.

He turns around and coughs into his hands, tanned fingers pressed against his mouth until he retches and shaky white petals fall out. Reiji doesn’t believe his eyes—the flowers must have roots in his brain—but Yuuya doesn’t stop until he coughs out an entire flower, and the world freezes in its tracks.

White chrysanthemums.

Spit-slicked white chrysanthemums, with stone grey stems and shining silver leaves resting on the palms of Yuuya’s hands, and Yuuya smiles—relief, satisfaction, triumphant.

“Too,” Yuuya repeats.

The roses stop growing in Reiji’s throat.

**Author's Note:**

> waves vaguely at the comment box


End file.
